Worldwide, the number of unemployed people rose by 5 million in 2013 to 202 million, according to an International Labor Organization's Global Employment Trends report.

October 10 – Delegates from some 140 countries and territories sign the Minamata Treaty, a UNEP treaty designed to protect human health and the environment from emissions and releases of mercury and mercury compounds

A Cambridge study showed that eating some foods high in saturated fat led to lower LDL cholesterol.

January 1 - A crowd stampeded after leaving a New Year's fireworks show in Ivory Coast's commercial center, killing 61 people, many of them youths, and injured more than 200.
The death toll was expected to rise

December 15 – Fighting breaks out in the capital city of the world's newest nation, South Sudan between ethnic Dinka and Nuer members of the presidential guard, and precipitates the South Sudanese political crisis.

February 19 - Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali has resigned after failing to reach agreement on forming a new government. Mr Jebali had been trying to form a new coalition in response to the political crisis sparked by the killing of opposition leader Chokri Belaid.

April 4 - The number of people sickened by the H7N9 bird flu virus climbed to 14.

November 24 - China declared an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea covering islands at the center of a row with Japan and said its armed forces will take
"defensive emergency measures" if aircraft don't comply.

January 1 - In a domestically televised New Year’s Day speech, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Eun said he wants to “remove confrontation” on this divided peninsula and called on “anti-reunification forces” in South Korea to end their hostility toward the North.

Newly elected South Korean President, Park Geun-hye, has said she will resume humanitarian exchanges and small-scale economic projects with the North — efforts that were shuttered under outgoing hard-liner Lee Myung-bak. But Park has pledged to hold off on major economic cooperation unless the North disassembles its nuclear weapons program, something Pyongyang says it will never do.

February 12 – North Korea conducts its third underground nuclear test, prompting widespread condemnation and tightened economic sanctions from the international community.

March 11 - North Korean state media announced that Pyongyang had carried through with a threat to cancel the 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War, as it and South Korea staged dueling war games amid threatening rhetoric.

March 30 - In an act of increasing aggression, North Korea declared that they are in a state of war with South Korea. Unfortunately for the young leader, he may not have realized that they had already been in a technical state of war since July 27, 1953 when an armistice was signed ending hostilities in the Korean war.

April 4 - Hours after North Korea said that it had final approval to launch "merciless" military strikes on the United States, South Korea's defense minister said North Korea has moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east coast.

April 2 - Unemployment in the euro area held steady at a record high in February, raising concerns that the ongoing recession is set to be a prolonged one as the region's debt crisis continues to weigh on economic activity

March 25 – The European Union agrees to a €10 billion economic bailout for Cyprus. The bailout loan will be equally split between the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism, the European Financial Stability Facility, and the International Monetary Fund. The deal precipitates a banking crisis in the island nation

January 5 - Mark Lynas, the founder of the anti-GMO movement, apologized and said he was completely wrong in opposing genetically modified foods. He claims that he, "found science" and feels that GMO foods are important for our future ability to feed the world.

In a January 2013 lecture to the Oxford Farming Conference, Lynas detailed his conversion from an organizer of the the anti-GMO food movement in Europe to becoming a supporter of the technology. He admitted "... in 2008 I was still penning screeds in the Guardian attacking the science of GM – even though I had done no academic research on the topic, and had a pretty limited personal understanding. I don’t think I’d ever read a peer-reviewed paper on biotechnology or plant science..." He apologized for engaging in vandalism of field trials of genetically engineered crops and rationalized his conversion stating, "anti-science environmentalism became increasingly inconsistent with my pro-science environmentalism with regard to climate change." Lynas criticized organizations with which he was previously associated including Greenpeace and organic trade groups like the U.K. Soil Association for ignoring scientific facts about genetically modified crop safety and benefits because it conflicted with their ideologies and stated he "was completely wrong to oppose GMOs."

March 16 - A donated human liver has been kept alive, warm and functioning outside a human being on a newly-developed machine and then successfully transplanted into patients in a medical world first.

February 11 - Citing advanced years and infirmity, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he would resign on February 28 after less than eight years in office, the first pope to do so in six centuries.

February 15 - The Pope's decision to retire came one week after a child abuse criminal tribunal said they were bringing criminal charges against him for child abuse crimes and therefore The pope is seeking audience with the Italian Prime Minister and asking for immunity as part of his retirement.

February 28 – Benedict XVI resigns as pope, becoming the first to do so since Gregory XII in 1415, and the first to do so voluntarily since Celestine V in 1294

March 13 - the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church was chosen by a conclave of cardinals. The new Pope is Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio and will take the name Francis. He is also the first pope from the Americas, the New World, and the Southern Hemisphere. He is the first non-European pope in over 1,200 years. The last non-European pope, St. Gregory III, was born in Syria and reigned from 731 CE to 741 CE.

June 14–30 – Flash floods and landslides in the Indian states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh kill more than 5,700 people and trap more than 20,000

June 27 - Over 600 people are confirmed dead due to floods from monsoon rains and 10,000 people have been displaced. The Ganges swelled with record rainfall.

December 11 - India’s Supreme Court overturned a historic lower-court decision on homosexuality making it a crime in the world’s most populous democracy, with violators facing up to 10 years in prison.

April 24 – An eight-story commercial building collapses in Savar Upazila near the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, leaving 1,129 dead and 2,500 injured. The accident is the deadliest non-terrorist structural collapse in modern times and the third-worst industrial disaster in history.

July 3 - After 3 days of massive protests throughout Egypt, the military sided with the people and staged a coup, overthrowing President Morsi (Mursi) who was put in power just a year prior during the last uprising. It is widely expected that this move create violent unrest from the Muslim Brotherhood.

March 17 - Pakistan's government stepped down after a full five-year term, paving the way for an election and change of administration that would be the country's first constitutional democratic handover since independence and partition from India.

January 1 - Fiscal Cliff averted - The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday that would allow tax rates to rise only on affluent Americans while temporarily suspending sweeping, across-the-board spending cuts.

January 11 - The United States is in the midst of a flu epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), along with a growing number of state and city health departments, are reporting some of the highest numbers of affected individuals in recent history. On Thursday, Boston declared a state of emergency, and Chicago patients have reportedly been urged away from the area’s overflowing emergency rooms.

February 21 – American scientists use a 3D printer to create a living lab-grown ear from collagen and animal ear cell cultures. In the future, it is hoped, similar ears could be grown to order as transplants for human patients suffering from ear trauma or amputation.

April 2 – The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Arms Trade Treaty to regulate the international trade of conventional weapons.

April 15 - Two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed 3, including an 8 year old and wounded nearly 200, some severely.

April 18 - one of the bombing suspects was killed in a shoot out with police. His younger brother was wounded and captured a day later.

April 23 - The Boy Scouts of America voted to end their ban on gay youth. A similar ban on gay adult leaders has yet to be overturned.

May 15 – In a study published in the scientific journal Nature, researchers from Oregon Health & Science University in the United States describe the first creation of human embryonic stem cells by cloning.

June 6 – American Edward Snowden discloses operations engaged by a US government mass surveillance program to news publications and flees the country, later being granted temporary asylum in Russia.

June 26 - The United States Supreme Court overturned key portions of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) allowing married gay people to have the same federal benefits as traditional married coupled. At the same time the court decided that opponents to the California court's decision to block Proposition 8, the proposition that disallowed gay marriage in that state, in effect, allowing gay marriage to continue in California.

November 12 - November 12 – Three Studies of Lucian Freud, a series of portraits of Lucian Freud by the British painter Francis Bacon, sells for US$142.4 million in a New York City auction, setting a new world record for an auctioned work of art.

November 13 - Hawaii, the State that started the gay marriage crisis in America voted to overturn that ban now legalizing gay marriage in Hawaii.

November 20 - Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois signed a same-sex marriage bill that will go into effect on June 1, 2014

December 20 - A Utah state ban on same-sex marriage was ruled unconstitutional by a district court judge. The ruling is likely to be appealed to a higher court.

December 26 - More than 700 people reported an unexplained fireball over Iowa.

December - A surveillance review panel convened by President Obama concluded that the NSA should not "in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial software." The panel also recommended that the NSA should notify companies if it discovers previously unknown security vulnerabilities in their software or systems—known as "zero days" because developers have been given zero days to fix them—except in rare cases involving "high priority intelligence collection."

July 10 - The SEC voted 4 to 1 in favor of implementing section 201(a) of the JOBS Act, which lifts the ban on general solicitation and permits startups, venture capitalists, and hedge funds to openly advertise that they’re raising money in private offerings.

September 4 - Blue Startups, a Hawaii-based accelerator founded by Henk Rogers began its second cohort including fast rising companies such as , Siftools?, Gibi, Ridify, and others.

January 22 - Galina Stepanenko, a former principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, was named the company’s acting artistic director on Tuesday, taking over for Sergei Filin, who was severely burned last week when a masked man threw acid in his face.

Amateur videos broadcast on state television showed an object streaking across the sky around 9:20 a.m. local time before bursting into a fireball. Residents in the city of Chelyabinsk, the largest in the affected region, described a shock wave from the meteorite that blew in doors and smashed glass.

December 29 - A suicide bomber detonated the equivalent of over 20 pounds of TNT near the entrance to a railway station in the central Russian city of Volgograd.

November 21 – President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine spurned an economic association agreement that had been years in the making between the European Union and Ukraine, in favor of closer ties to Russia. This resulted in the beginning of the Euromaidan pro-EU demonstrations.

January 9 - President Hugo Chavez, still in Cuba recovering from his 4rth cancer surgery, will not appear for his inaugural swearing-in ceremony. This has the opposition asking the Venezuelan Supreme Court for a decision on the constitutionality of postponing this ceremony. Doubts have also been cast as to whether he is, or will be, healthy enough to govern the nation.

March 8 - Vice President Nicolas Maduro was sworn in Friday as acting president of Venezuela in a ceremony held in the National Assembly in Caracas, three days after the death of President Hugo Chavez.

April 14 - Nicolás Maduro, the acting president and handpicked political heir to Hugo Chávez, narrowly won election to serve the remainder of Mr. Chávez’s six-year term as president of Venezuela, officials said late Sunday. He defeated Henrique Capriles Radonski, a state governor who ran strongly against Mr. Chávez in October.

January 8 - Bush fires have been burning out of control. NSW and Tasmania were the focal points of an anxious 24 hours, resources were also stretched in Victoria and the ACT, while firefighters also had blazes to put out near Alice Springs and in southern Queensland.

Homes near Ballarat in Victoria were destroyed and seven people treated in hospital after an out-of-control grass fire swept through Snake Valley.

Authorities rushed to contain the blaze - one of at least 13 fires burning in the state on Tuesday night - which grew quickly to about 1100 hectares.

Four properties were believed to have been lost to fire. Historical homestead Carngham Station, a grandiose two-story brick villa set on more than 2000 hectares with a 30-hectare lake was destroyed.

September 6 - Tony Abbott defeats Kevin Rudd in the general election for Prime Minister.

November 10 - Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippine Islands causing as many as 10,000 deaths and massive destruction. This is one of the largest typhoons in history and the largest to strike the islands.

February 5 - An 8.0 earthquake struck the islands triggering a tsunami that destroyed several villages. About 100 people were left homeless in the village of Lauva on Ndende island after 16 houses were destroyed by the tsunami and at least five people were killed.

January 12 - Aaron Swartz, Internet activist and programmer who helped create an early version of RSS and later played a key role in stopping a controversial online piracy bill in Congress, died age 26, in an apparent suicide by hanging.

January 15 – Nagisa Oshima, Japanese film director (b. 1932)

January 21 – Michael Winner, British film director and producer (b. 1935)

April 8 - Margaret Thatcher, former and first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1979 to 1990, age 87 of a stroke.

April 8 - Annette Joanne Funicello, an American actress and singer. Beginning her professional career as a child performer at the age of twelve, Funicello rose to prominence as one of the most popular "Mouseketeers" on the original Mickey Mouse Club.

April 12 - Maria Tallchief - Ballerina, her work seeking to establish a permanent ballet company in Chicago eventually led to our burgeoning dance scene today as well as the Joffrey Ballet's relocation there in the 1990s.

April 14 - Hilary Koprowski, a virologist and former director of the Wistar Institute who developed the first polio vaccine and helped improve the rabies vaccine for humans, died age 96.

June 24 - Dr. James Martin, Martin was an expert in the field of systems design, Software development methodology, information engineering and computer-aided software engineering. He was one of the first to promote fourth-generation programming languages, and was the main developer of the Rapid Application Development methodology and ,author of many books such as The Wired Society: A Challenge for Tomorrow (1977) and contributing founder of The James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford. According to Computerworld’s 25th anniversary issue, he was ranked fourth among the 25 individuals who have most influenced the world of computer science.